Fall Is...HOA Letters

It's hard to get good yard help.

I have this yard guy named Billy Bachelor. He is a devil-may-care fellow who usually wears overalls with no shirt under them, but adds a hoodie jacket on top. His dental health is not great and if he were on a reality show, the producers would add subtitles when he speaks, though he is perfectly clear to me. He lives somewhere down around Athens, but he comes up here to do my spring and fall pine straw and cleanups.

I've written before, over the years, about our Home Owners' Association and its reign of terror. When the seasons change is usually when the hysterical letters start arriving in our mailbox. I don't even open them because I know what they say: Trim hedges, add pine straw to beds, paint the roses red, etc. Okay. Matt and I both pretend these letters do not exist and we never discuss them. To do so would be to acknowledge that neither of us will do yard work. I mean, Matt mows, and he removes leaves (once a season after they've all fallen down). But he is not out there tending the land. He works on his own projects all the time, and I am super lazy.

Sometimes a big part of a healthy marriage is just ignoring stuff together.

For a long time I never knew how to contact Billy Bachelor. He just appeared one day with a trailer full of pine straw. Then six months later, he was back, just in time. That was a few years ago. I started having him do more and more tasks. The guy knows a lot about plants. He'll come and look the place over, give me a list of stuff he'll do, then quote me a price. Then we negotiate and I think I'm being a real hardass, and then I talk him down, but I'm probably still paying him too much, and everybody is happy.

Week before last, I was really needing Billy to come back. Things were looking a bit overgrown. I was thinking, how do I summon that guy? There should be some kind of beacon. But then there he was! He brought his girlfriend and his father. We talked over what they would do and he said that if I paid a bit more he would remove this dead limb from a tall tree that hovers over our driveway. It really could decide to fall and hurt someone, so I said sure.

They set to work and did all the things. It took a few hours, and he said he'd have to come back the next day to do the tree limb. I said, "Well, shall I pay you today or tomorrow?" Of course he wanted to be paid that day. And he has not come back to do the tree. I know, duh. Which surprised me! He has always been pretty diligent in seeking my business, and I'm a good customer for him.

But he had given me his phone number. Aha! So I texted him and he didn't respond. I did not text him again, because I don't want to enter into a pestering text relationship with a south Georgia pine straw farmer.

So I imagine that Billy thinks he has burned a bridge with me? Or maybe not, maybe he hasn't thought of it at all. But I would be happy to see him again come Spring; I'm just going to hold him to our agreement about the tree limb, or tell him that since I effectively overpaid him the last time, I'm taking it off the next round of services.

If I were to text him, I would want to say something like, "You dropped the ball, but don't be embarrassed, I'm not even mad, you can pick it up the next time." But that doesn't seem like something that can happen?

I'm telling you all this because it's Saturday and nobody reads on Saturday.

I don't know why, but I always seem to have these ambivalent relationships with tradespeople and domestic helpers. Take my house cleaner Fabienne (please!), but that's a whole 'nother story.

I hope you are having a lovely evening. Right now Laura is on her way from the last Wizard show to the cast party. She is in her full glory! Life is too rich!

xoxo

HOA Has Their Dang Panties in A Bunch

One day a couple of weeks ago we were delighted to receive not one but two letters from our Homeowners Association. Two on the same day. They were writing just to say hi, lookin' good.

Not really.

They were writing because in one of their panoptical surveillance drive-bys of the subdivision, they decided that our house and yard were failing to meet the design standards put in place to beautify our neighborhood and protect all of our property values. And they knew we would want to be informed of this breach in our covenant with them as soon as possible.

One of the letters directed us to, "Please trim back shrubs/bushes in front of house." Fair enough. We have this giant snowball verbena bush that blooms in early spring, and then goes totally bananas foster with the leafing out. Going crazy and reaching for the sky. Huge bush. I have actually blogged about this thing before, and the difficulties of grooming it due to its position at the edge of a little cliff on the side of our house. I've blogged about it multiple times. It is probably the most blogged-about bush in the county. Except for the Real Housewives of Atlanta. badum-CHING!

Yeah, so the second letter said, in bold type, "Please pressure and/or paint the rusted chimney." I am sure they meant "pressure wash," as that rust stain has ignored my pressure for five years. Our chimney cap had rusted and stained the siding on the chimney underneath it. We had the chimney cap repainted when our roof was replaced this winter, but the stain remained. It's not that we liked the stain, but we have been living with it because one time Matt climbed up on the roof with a bottle of CLR and it was nearly the last thing he did on this earth. Our roof is too steep and the chimney, we decided, was accessible only to God.

So when Matt saw that letter, he had some really heartfelt things to say in response. Very heartfelt and colorful. I listened to him and validated his frustration because it's important to do that in a marriage. Then I went about trying to find someone crazy enough to get up on that roof. And Reader, I found him.

In your neighborhood, do you get handymen and other entrepreneurial types taping flyers to your mailbox to advertise their services? We do, and I think those flyers are a nuisance. They blow everywhere and make litter. But I called one of those guys. His name is John and he came on the double. He seemed undaunted by the immense precariousness involved in the job and quoted me a very reasonable price. Friday morning, bright and early, he set to work pressure washing our entire house and cleaning the chimney.

He was here for twelve hours.

Over the course of the afternoon I progressed from offering him cold drinks to wanting to fix him a hearty meal and tuck him in bed. Dude was working. I was afraid we would break him. I was afraid he would fall to his death. I was afraid he would run out of daylight before he got the chimney cleaned, but as twilight deepened, he was packing up his ladders and the house looked great. The pressure washing is totally one of those things where you don't realize how dirty it was until it's clean. Anyway, this John has gumption and he does everything. I feel that I have found a treasure beyond rubies.

Meanwhile, inside where it's air conditioned, an electrician spent a few hours hanging a chandelier and fixing our smoke detectors and left with twice what I paid John. Message: Kids, learn a trade.

On Friday while this was happening I was like, "Oh, it is so exhausting supervising tradesmen! Swoon!" And Matt was like, "How exactly did they change how you spent your day in any way?" And I had no great answer but men don't really understand these things.

Between my pressure-washed exterior and my new chandelier, I feel like I have a new house. The old house was soiled, but now I have a fresh one! It doesn't take much to make me happy.

Plus, the HOA will be off our backs, because weekend before last, I also purchased a motorized hedge trimmer and made the effort of personally asking Matt to work on the verbena while I was in the mountains. Which he did. And when I got back, we walked outside and I said, "Okay honey, let's talk about your work on the shrubbery. Walk me through your vision." Because there was a big notch cut out of the verbena, like it's missing a tooth, and Matt explained that no human could have reached that spot so he just held the hedge trimmer above his head and cut whatever he could reach. Like a bad haircut, I guess it will grow out. Also his work was free.

Believe it or not, this story could have branched out in several more directions but I know that you are wishing you could throw yourself off my roof right now, so I will close. I hope you had a good weekend and that all of your labors are bearing fruit.

Sexy Lumberjacking

I swear I am unable to think of any other post title.

So yesterday, in the middle of a normal, lovely afternoon, I was sitting in the office chatting with Matt and his partner Lincoln. Hank was playing outside with the foster daughters from next door, Laura was upstairs, having, I suspect, sneaked up there to watch "Cake Boss" on my laptop. The dog was somewhere lolling. Not a cloud in the sky.

Then Laura came running into the room. "You have got to see this!" she said. I figured that the dog had climbed onto a bed or barfed. Or that Laura had figured out a new way to sign her name in cursive. There is just no way to gauge the bigness of an event from Laura saying "You have got to see this."

But good grief, look.

A big oak tree fell across the driveway. Laura heard it from her room. And--I get the shakes even writing this--Hank and the little girls saw it fall from where they were playing, in Conspiracy Guy's front yard, two houses over.

Who expects a tree to fall over in the middle of a calm, sunny day? This tree had a few issues, I guess, because its twin tree had to be taken down last year. That was the time that the tree dude talked me to death and then stole my nuts. And then charged me $750. But this tree was healthy, I thought, because look at it. Look how leafy it was.

As we went out in the front yard, Hank and the girls came running up to the downhill side. Y'all, I had several moments of what I think was shock, and distress, realizing that they could have just as easily been playing in our yard or walking down our driveway when the tree fell. Awful. I could not get that vision out of my head. But there they were, fine and chattering with excitement.

That top picture doesn't show it so well. This was a big ass tree.

The trunk more or less broke off at the ground. The roots were rotten, but I never would have thought it.

Then my thought was, "Okay, we are now marooned in our house forever." Sitting in the office, I had just said, "Matt, is there any reason the kids and I can't go on up to the mountain house right now?" Then, crash, and my reaction was, "Now I can't go to the mountains!" Sometimes in an emergency, I whine.

I need not have worried. Matt borrowed a chainsaw from Conspiracy Guy. Then he and Lincoln set about cutting up the tree. I think it was a nice break from their desk work, actually. A man likes a chance to wear his steel-toed boots.

Plus, Matt + chainsaw = hot!

Yeah, cut it, baby!

Now the driveway is clear, so we're not trapped in our house after all. There is tree crap all over the yard, but I'm leaving town and I am guessing that problem doesn't have my name on it.

I love men.

The Scene in My Front Yard

I took this picture five minutes ago. That car down there on the right belongs to one of the artists doing some work for Matt. It has been raining here, steadily, since last night. The dude tried to back out of our driveway, which curves, but he went straight, completely left the pavement, and then couldn't get any traction on the wet grass, which then became mud. I bet that part of the yard is going to look awesome in the morning. If the HOA didn't like the imperceptible bare spot on the other side of our driveway, they are really going to want to see this.

What you can't tell from the picture is that, happily, he didn't run into the power box concealed in that pampas grass, and he didn't run over our neighbor Mindy's flower bed. You do not want to mess with that woman's roses. So it could have been worse. I came outside when both Matt and his friend were standing there, soaking wet, trying to shove boards under the front tires. I couldn't believe that the car was completely off the driveway. "Crappity crap crap CRAP!" I thought. But what I said was, "Oh well, why don't y'all go get us some Wendy's?" Because I am well-bred like that, people.

Then I looked up the Weight Watchers point value of an order of Wendy's fries. But that is a whole 'nother story.

Another rain vignette from my day: Hank likes to "help" me roll the giant trashcan out to the street, which is tricky in perfect weather conditions, and not at all a fun time in the rain. So he had his raincoat and Croc Mammoths on, and I had my raincoat and Uggs, so we went to the side of the house to get the trash can. I tried to pick up a cardboard box that had somehow fallen onto the ground, to throw it into the can, but of course the cardboard was wet, AND the box had been filled with trash, so the box fell apart and I had to spend a few minutes picking Kleenex and candy wrappers out of the mud at the base of the trashcan. While I was doing this with my free hand, the umbrella I was holding in my other hand got entangled in the holly tree beside the house. I had to tug it loose, which meant shaking the wet holly branches all over myself, a lot. Hank said, "Mama, why are you DOING that?" Yes, why?

Then he scampered off and stood in the gutter, letting the water run into his shoes. Which again, were not ordinary rubber Crocs, but the Crocs with the wooly lining. You might be surprised at how much water those linings hold. To paraphrase Anchorman, I mean, I wasn't even mad, because it was amazing.

Oh HOA, Why So Sensitive?

As summer gives way to fall, our HOA is stepping up its campaign of terror. For my international readers, an HOA is a Home Owners' Association, a group in each neighborhood that residents pay dues to, and which is charged with making sure people don't put of 8-foot fences in front of their houses or keep rusty washing machines on their front porches. They also police everyone's landscaping and yard maintenance, and they send you letters and can fine you if you don't stay in line. I've written about our attempts to stay out of yard trouble before. Ha, and that post was almost exactly one year ago. A letter from the HOA really is one of the most special gifts of the season.

We received two letters last week, on the same day. Our "covenant reminders" (sounds like something God gave the Israelites) are:

• "Please edge around the bedding areas. (redefine the beds)
• "Please remove the Bermuda grass and/or weeds from the beds.
• "Please address the bare spots in the lawn at the curb and along the right side of the driveway facing the house."

I love their way with language. It's that pseudo-literate officialese that is now rampant in this here American life. At least this year they spelled "redefine" correctly. Matt and I had fun with "address the bare spots." He pointed his finger toward the ground and said, "Now, bare spot, see here sir!" You would think from reading those that our yard looks really bad. It doesn't, or I don't think so. Or at least the overall effect is fine. It is time for us to put down more pine straw (I think that's what they mean by "redefine" the beds"). But jeez, the bare spots they're talking about are a couple places alongside the driveway that get driven on sometimes. I swear, they are not noticeable from the street, unless you just have a major, unhealthy obsession with lawn.

The lily bed on the left side of the yard, near the azaleas, did need attention. So Sunday I announced that we were doing yard work. I put on gloves and went out there to pull weeds. And pull, and pull. Actually it wasn't even "weeds" plural. It was one species, maybe even one plant. The scientific name is, I believe, The Vine That Swallowed Georgia. It's not kudzu, it's something cuter and daintier than that. But it sends runners everywhere, and what looks like a few little sprouts here and there among the pine straw are all connected as part of The Vine. You can pull and pull it, and you are pulling on all vines everywhere, in a huge malevolent network. Did you see that movie The Ruins? It was like that, only without the bad college-relationship choices. There were some briars too, so I spent a while pulling The Vine and ensnaring myself in brambles. Laura walked around with hedge clippers asking me if she could clip this and that. She wasn't so into the pulling. But clipping and lopping, yes.

Hank grew worried about me. He kept coming outside and saying, "Mama, it's getting dark out here!" And it's true that I was thinking about lying down in the pinestraw and letting The Vine win.

While I did battle with The Vine, Matt took a trip to Home Depot to get some necessary supplies. Do you know how many bales of pine straw you can fit into the back of a Jetta stationwagon? Ten, if you fold the backseat down. He also bought a new rake, and some organic fertilizer (fact: organic fertilizer is poop), but alas for him, it got dark before he could really get into spreading the straw. Too bad! I know how he hated to have his raking cut short. So the bales of straw are sitting alongside the driveway. Maybe if the HOA spies come around again in the next couple of days, they'll think, "Oh, they're totally on it! No need to hassle these good people further." Sure they will.

So that's a work-in-progress. And darned if it doesn't feel like fall today. I went outside last night to go to the store, and it was positively crisp. So I bought our first pumpkin of the season at Target. When Hank saw it this morning, he said, "Mama, we need more pumpkins. We need FREE!" I assured him that there would be at least two more.

I have a crazy plan, actually, to spray paint the one I just got. Long ago I saw a thing in Martha Stewart about painting pumpkins cream or different shades of green. It was simple and it looked pretty. It also lets you make use of the cheaper scratch-and-dent pumpkins. Might be a good thing.

Mitch the Shy Landscaper, Returned!

Speaking of returned, we rolled up to our house this morning at 2am, after 27 hours of travel from Sydney. Somewhere around hour 18, I realized that other people, smarter people, break up these kinds of itineraries. Like, after our transpacific flight, we could have spent the night in LA, then come on to ATL the next day. But maybe that just means longer in-transit time and not a more restful experience overall. Whatever, we're tough. Matt sat awake for the entire 12-hour flight from Auckland to LA, holding a sleeping Hank. And I actually watched Dragonball: Evolution, and even enjoyed part of it. Take that, air travel! Is that all you got? Next time, try kryptonite.

So as we were approaching the house, I said, "I wonder what our grass looks like?" I was thinking it hadn't been mowed in four weeks, and would now be a knee-high refuge for possums, or even could have sprouted a Trans-Am up on blocks. Imagine my surprise and wonderment when we rounded the corner and saw that it was neatly cut. And edged! And the laurel bushes were clipped! What Good Fairy of Lawn Care did I have to thank for this? My first thought was, believe it or not, of Frenemy Neighbor. I had left a key with her, because none of my non-frenemized peeps were going to be home this whole time, and at one point I asked her to go in the house and have a look around. So when I saw the grass cut, I thought maybe she had arranged for it to be done in the name of neighborhood beautification or just plain kindness. Then, I got into the house and saw that she must have straightened up our living room when she came in. We had left it somewhat cycloned on our way out the door, but it was now plumped and neatened. This confirmed my hunch that she'd arranged for grass cutting, and my heart filled with appreciation for her. I felt like such an ungrateful wretch, making blog sport of her character eccentricities! Such a kind and thoughtful neighbor! Oh reader, in the dark of night, humbled and travel-weary, I vowed to be a better person and a kinder blogger!

Then, we all woke up very late today and found that the mail lady had delivered a crate of withheld mail. In it was an invoice from Mitch the Disappearing Mowing Dude! The invoice bills us for that time he mowed-and-ran, and claims that he did our yard three times while we were gone. Fascinating! I am happy to pay him, of course, and I'm happy that the yard didn't return to jungle while we were gone, but it's funny, because there was nothing in our interaction that one time that suggested we were agreeing to a weekly relationship, AND he didn't come the week right before we left, but apparently came each week we were gone. So, hmm. He didn't know we were about to leave town, though, so I don't think it's some kind of fiendish plot to get rich by only mowing our yard twice instead of four times.

So Frenemy apparently did not cut our grass, though she did straighten the living room, which was very sweet. When Matt and I were heading from Sydney to Vanuatu, I emailed her and asked her to go into the house and check things out. When we got back to email, I had a note from her that said only this:

We checked on your house & everything looked fine. A bee entered when the front door was open so be aware.

Is she not kind of adorable? I laughed so hard when I got that. It seemed like such a world away from everything we were doing. We had recently stood on the rim of a volcano that was shooting lava into the air. Just so incongruous. And we weren't due back for over a week, but she thought she'd better let us know about that bee. When we got in last night, I sent a "we're back" text message to Amy, and I added, "There's a huge bee in here! Why didn't somebody warn us?"

What was that about being a kinder blogger? I do owe her a big thank-you. And we are glad to be home, even jet lagged, and glad the crape myrtle is still blooming, and glad the grass is cut, and glad to have had a wonderful trip. You'll be hearing more about Australia, I'm afraid, and Vanuatu, because I've got a backlog of stories to tell and photos to share. I hope y'all are having a wonderful summer. I'm looking forward to coming by everyone's blog and getting caught up.

Come Back, Little Mowing Dude

Matt wound up sleeping at a Motel 6 in Spartanburg, South Carolina late last night, because he ran into major traffic delays between D.C. and home. I was like, "Honey, treat yourself to the Super 8! It's 2 more!" But he is a frugalisto. We always joke (in that way that jokes are totally true) that if he didn't have me and the kids, he'd be happy living under a bridge. The Motel 6 is like Xanadu to him.

So while he was making his way home this morning, and I was starting my day with the kids. some switch in my head flipped and I was like, "Okay, the business of today is to find someone to cut the grass and deep clean the house like RIGHT NOW, immeejitly." You know how you can just sometimes feel very urgent about something that isn't actually a matter of life and death? I just wanted it done, son. As I mentioned yesterday, Matt wants us to get the house cleaner back, so I got right on that, and I thought I'd also get someone to come do the yard, just this once, so he didn't have to do it. And the grass was getting so long that I sensed an HOA howler coming our way. (True story: Laura and Hank made a playhouse out of a big box last week, complete with mail slot. Laura made fake mail for them to receive, and all the pieces of mail were bills and HOA letters.)

Well, you'd think it wouldn't be that hard to get someone to agree to come and do our grass. All my neighbors use big chemical services who also cut grass, and I just wanted a dude to mow. Like a lone dude. So I got a bunch of numbers on Craigslist and called them. I was like, "You sir, good day! I am in possession of money that I would like to exchange for your mowing services! If you would do me the honor of coming 'round to my place. . .what's that? Such much? A contract, you say? Well surely our word as gentlefolk. . .I see. Very well. And best wishes in all of your endeavors too, Chad."

So that's how that went. I finally found one young entrepreneur who agreed to come out. And he did, looking all of about 14 years old. Though he was driving and he does own a business, so he must be an adult? He said that he would cut the whole yard for $35, but he didn't have time to trim our big hydrangea bush because he had a doctor's appointment. I said, "That's fine, Mitch, just do what you can." He mowed, and I could see him dumping the grass clippings in a bag, and then he got in his truck and drove away. Without coming to the door to get paid. Huh? I was on the phone, and I could see him climb into his truck, and I thought maybe he was going to prepare a little invoice or something, and then he was gone.

So I called his cell and left a message saying, "Hey Mitch, you didn't get your money!" I don't know if he had to rush to his appointment or what. But I feel bad. He just seemed so young and vulnerable, or something. I'm going to call him again tomorrow, if he doesn't show back up, and I'm going to hound that kid until he gets his $35. Weird. I told my friend that it felt kind of like the ding-dong ditch, if the person who rang your bell also mowed your lawn.

I also had four conversations with house cleaners, including my old cleaner Bobbi, but I'll save that for another post. And OMG, the mountain of laundry I did today. The absolute Kilimanjaro of laundry. Last night I was dumping it over the landing from upstairs, down onto the living room floor. The load from my bedroom was so big that when it hit the hardwood floor, the booming sound woke up my child.

Hope y'all are easing into your week.

I Guess the Nuts Were a Tip

This morning, Hank and I were snuggled together in the sunroom watching Dora. It's how we start our day. Outside it grew windier and more blustery. On Dora, Diego made a guest appearance and brought an animal. Hank said, "It's a chinchilla," about ten seconds before Diego identified it. I was all amazement at this, because I didn't know what a chinchilla was until I was 30 years old and I'm still not sure I get it, when suddenly I heard a loud popping sound. When Matt came downstairs a few minutes later, I said, "Go out front and see if that tree fell down." I was thinking of a big oak in our front yard that has been ailing ever since before we moved in. It has a big crack in it and the trunk is hollow. It's also aimed squarely at our neighbor, leaning ominously toward Mindy's house.

I didn't think it really had fallen down, but indeed, the sound I heard was the tree cracking even more, so that now roughly half of the diameter of the trunk was still actually attached to the ground. Holy crackamole! Matt announced that he was going to Home Depot "to get some chain." The whole tree rocked in the wind, and I had visions of our tree falling on Mindy's house and our homeowner's insurance refusing to pay because the tree had been dead. Matt corrected me, "That tree is NOT dead, it has leaves on it. Take some pictures of them." So I commenced taking pictures of the partially-dead tree. Then I went in the house and googled "emergency tree service," and "oh god our neighbor will sue us please help." Actually, Mindy and Ron seemed pretty chill about it. Matt had spoken to them, and Ron said, "Well, if it falls, it falls." "When did they get all Zen?" I wondered. And I also googled "chinchilla," because seriously, how does Hank know that?

I got some tree people on the phone and they said they'd be here in an hour. I really love dealing with small businesses for this reason. Just like when we needed emergency locksmithing. When you need help quickly, I think a mom-and-pop is the way to go, because they want the business, and the people who do the work will also be answering the phone. I spoke to an older gent, and he reassured me, "I just need to go pick up Rod and we'll be there directly." Good enough. And by all means, bring Rod.

Now Matt was back with some yellow strappy things to splint the broken trunk. I was all, "Don't even touch it! Let's just leave it alone," like it was a bomb that would go off. But here he is checking out his handiwork.




I shouldn't have doubted him, because when the tree man arrived, he was highly complimentary of the straps. The older tree guy had a cigar clenched between his teeth the entire time he spoke to me. Later he replaced it with a cigarette. But he said they'd get the tree down. Here it is after they cut off the broken part. Doesn't it look like a great fairy house? Farewell, old tree.

And there's Rod up in the tree, taking the limbs off. I pulled up a chair to the dining room window and watched this like it was a matinee. Also visible in this pic is neighbor Ron's Hummer, waiting to be crushed by a tree.

It was exciting, and there were tense moments, but they got it down. Or older guy and Rod did. There was a third man there who did nothing. Finally after a few hours of tree removal and cleanup, older guy came into the house to settle up. I thought this would be a straightforward and brief exchange in which he would tell me the fee, I would give him a check, and we would have brief pleasantries. Noooo. Instead he started to tell me two interleaved stories, prompted by his asking me what my husband did for work. When I said he was a computer game developer, Tree Man said that his son was studying for an IT job. I remarked that it was good work, and Tree Man said that his son had a criminal record, "like 95% of people," but that since it was drugs and not theft, he wouldn't have any trouble getting a job. Then he launched into a discussion of how most cops and DA's have drug problems, which he knows because he hunts with them. There was a parallel thread about some unidentified people selling their software company and how their product was "better than Google, or I don't know what they were calling it in those days," and how they made a killing and are only 26 and party all the time on their 3.5 acres, and can you believe that. I just made those two stories sound so much more cogent and interesting than they actually were. It took him forEVER to get all that out, while I leaned against the counter trying to look polite, and deferential to his elder status, but not too encouraging. At times, he paused so, so long that I feared that he might lose his thread altogether and circle back around to the beginning.

Finally I asked him what the damage was, and he said, "We'll let you go for 750. It should be more, but I'll say 750 if you'll let me try some of these nuts here." He gestured toward a big, two-pound jug of Emerald cocoa almonds. Reader, do you know how good those things are? So of course, I said, "By all means, help yourself." He reached into the jug with his unwashed, earthy, tree wrangling hands. I said, "Why don't you take those with you? Do you need a snack in your truck?" And he said, "I think I will."



So finally I paid that raconteur and waltzed him and his nuts to the door, and listened on the porch to a few more minutes of explanation of the DUI system and many other facets of human existence that I had not heretofore considered properly. Then he and Rod left, after diagnosing what was wrong with my azaleas, and promising to come back and put in some knockdown roses for me. Actually, that last part was really useful.

So, delicate tree removal and cleanup: $750. 38 ounces of Emerald almonds: $20. Not having our mostly-dead tree crush our neighbor's house: priceless.

It Was Pretty While It Lasted

This was the maple tree in our backyard, just one week ago.

It was crazy, riotous, gorgeous. While it was at peak color, it cast a reddish light into our sunroom. Every time I turned in that direction, I thanked the providential thinking of whoever decided to plant that tree in that spot, because it was framed so beautifully by our windows. Today ninety percent of those leaves are on the ground in big russet drifts, joined by the less spectacular oak leaves. Raking season is upon us.

This morning I realized that those pesky leaves can serve as a Toddler Exit Alert. I was upstairs making my bed. Hank was downstairs watching Dora (I thought), but in reality he was plotting his next move. I had my bedroom window open to air out the bedroom. I know it is chilly, but I like to do this--I learned it from that book Home Comforts. Anyway, suddenly I heard a sound like Sasquatch crashing through a thicket. I ran to the window and spied Hank trudging through leaves on his way to the sandbox and points beyond, wearing only a pajama shirt, a diaper, and Uggs. That stinker figured out how to open the back door, AND get around the baby gate on the back porch. He had even moved the gate back into place behind him. Luckily, the extraordinary crunching sounds gave away his departure.

We had a little talk about leaving the house without Mama. Like all of our little talks, I suspect it had no effect at all, though he cheerfully agreed to mend his ways. Maybe after the leaves are gone, I'll scatter tin cans all over the yard?

Lordy Lordy, Look Who's Gourdy

Several satisfying things happened this weekend. We needed to increase our pumpkin quotient, and get a jump on some fall décor. The leaves are changing all around us, and Mindy, she of the spotless yard, has a little autumn tableau set up in front of her place, with a veiled bride scarecrow and a groom scarecrow, surrounded by mums, pumpkins, and tin jack o' lanterns. Mindy got married not long ago, and her scarecrows are standing by a little sign that says "The Newlyweds." So, clearly, we needed to up our game. On Sunday we drove up to Burt's Farm, near Dawsonville, a pumpkin mecca.

That bluish-gray pumpkin is called a Jarrahdale, a variety originally from Australia. The little sign at the farm identified it as a "Jerraddle." I tried to google "jerraddle," and nothing came up. With more sleuthing, I found the proper name, and I wonder if when an Australian pronounces "Jarrahdale," it sounds, to a Georgia pumpkin farmer, like "jerraddle," with the emphasis on the second syllable. Amy, my Australian native-informant, what do you think?

Anyway, it's pretty. The pumpkins I've been seeing at the grocery stores just weren't looking too good so far, though we'll probably get a few from there to carve. The big orange one is just the size I wanted--the $14 size. (You could spend a lot of money on a pumpkin at that place. Mindy has one that's the size of an end-table. It is hulking.) Also, Laura and I made a feather Halloween wreath, which I'm sure you'll be seeing in a future post. It is prettier than it sounds, even if Matt says it looks like a Muppet.

Another pressing outdoor goal was achieved Saturday when Matt and I trimmed the bushes out front. Or "trimmed" is really too mild a word. "Went medieval on" is more like it. You may recall that they sorely needed it. I am sure it was a spectacle, the way Matt and I both had to wrestle with the huge hydrangea bush. I mean, we got around, behind, and on top of that thing. We were merciless, and that bush gave as good as it got. At one point, Matt was standing on a stepladder between the bush and the house, wielding the heavy-duty loppers and reaching as high as he could, while I stood on the front side and pushed parts of the bush towards him with a rake. To do that, I had to get really intimate with the laurel hedge in front of the hydrangea, and it was covered in laurel pollen. As you will recall from the post linked above, the terrain makes this a challenging spot. Every time he would reposition the ladder, Matt would tell me his "exit strategy," or where he was going to hurl himself if he fell off, so I could avoid that location. At another moment, I stood on the porch with Matt holding on to the back of my jeans, and leaned out as far as a could with the clippers. We should have sold tickets--it was a slick operation, people. Sometimes we said ugly words. And there were spiders. But we got the chains back on Frankenstein.

In other news, I took a break from heavy-duty grocery shopping. I didn't get anything at CVS except a newspaper and bag of Snickers, for medicinal use. There just isn't anything at CVS that grabs me right now. I might go back in for the bogo All detergent--I've been hoarding coups.

My Publix trip had a brevity and a purity that was actually pleasurable. I didn't have a sheaf of coupons, and I didn't buy a lot of stuff. Bananas, bogo Kozy Shack rice pudding (I've long since used up those printable coupons), two loaves of bread, and two liters of diet pepsi. The Mystery One Cent item was Peter Pan PB--score. And I had the coupon from Sunday's inserts for a free bag of Good Bites doggie treats. Spent $10.66, "saved" $9.83. I'll go back sometime in the next day or so for all the Kahiki and Barber chicken craziness. Check out Fiddledeedee to see what the more creative shoppers are doing this week.

I had some things to say on the subject of fashion at the pumpkin farm, and about my unwillingness to participate in the scarecrow contest this year, but it can wait. I hope y'all had a lovely weekend!

Our Front Yard: 3 Landscaping and/or Personality Problems

Today I was standing out in the street talking to my next-door neighbor Mindy. I am not kidding when I say that every time I run into her outside, the first words out of her mouth after “Hi” are an apology for her front yard. Usually she begins with, “My yard looks so terrible,” or “My poor roses! I haven’t been taking good care of them.” Like, this is her conversational opener, I guess the same way that some people complain about the weather. What is weird about this is that her front yard always looks tidy and beautiful.

She has seasonal plantings, with flowers blooming for a lot of the year, and she has a yard service come every week and mow, edge, and clean up. So her yard is by any definition, just great. This picture was taken in early spring, when the azaleas were blooming. Right now in the same area, she has rosebushes. The little patch of pinestraw by her driveway turns into a huge Lantana bush in the summer. Her grass is like a carpet. And up by her front door, her boxwoods are trimmed into little topiary bubbles--you can see if you enlarge the pic. Looks nice.

Now, we’ve had our own yard issues, sometimes involving a letter from the Home Owners' Association, so depending on my paranoia level when I’m talking to her, I am prone to think, “Is she saying our place looks terrible? Is she trying to give me a gentle hint?" I was getting a complex about it. We have some pretty stuff growing in our yard, but unlike Mindy, we don't pay to have it professionally maintained, AND we're not much into yardwork. Matt keeps the grass mowed pretty well, and edged, and in the late spring growing season, I pulled a lot of weeds from around the things I wanted to cultivate. But hedge trimming and shaping, and mulching, not so much. The whole thing looks a little overgrown now, and it's weighing on my mind in a sort of low-grade way.

All of this was on my conscience when I was talking to Mindy. Then she told me that she had gotten at least three letters from the HOA in the last month. I was like, huh? She said that one of them was because they left their garbage can within sight for more than 24 hours. Okay. One was a complaint that her Lantana bush needed to be trimmed. And another was about an empty concrete urn up by her garage. (If you have a planter out, it's supposed to have something growing in it. But this thing is completely unnoticeable.) I was amazed that she had gotten all that flack while we have gotten one letter in the last several months. Our yard presents so, SO many more opportunities for a "friendly reminder" from the Garden Committee. So the poor woman is always apologizing for her yard, I guess, because she's always getting castigated for it. The HOA has given her an inferiority complex, while letting us, in my opinion, skate.

There are three theories for why this is so. One is Matt's, one is mine, and one is Mindy's:

Matt's: our house is set farther back from the street, and when the garden cops do their monthly driveby, they just don't notice much.

Mine: they don't send us a letter for every "violation," because their expectations for our yard are very low. In the last two years, we've taught them what level to hold us to.

Mindy's: the Garden Committee has a grudge against her personally, because for years, she was on that committee, and she was one of the garden cops. So now it's payback time.

Mindy is prone to craziness in other aspects of her life (that's a story for another day), so Matt thinks her theory is overly paranoid. I'm not sure what to think. But we are facing some challenges of our own in the yard right now.

1)The first thing that needs to happen is that our shrubs need trimming. This is daunting to me.

That hydrangea bush has now reached the top of the window, and the laurel could use some cutting. I'm not sure really what size the laurel should be, though. How much can you prune a shrub without killing it? The topography is tough here. This side of the sidewalk slopes off to a retaining wall, with about an 8-10 foot drop below it. I can't figure out where to put a ladder to cut this monster. But it really needs it. And do we need a fancy gas-powered or electric trimmer? We have old-fashioned loppers, like big scissors.

2) Also, and this hurts my soul, something is slowly killing the azaleas. Like one side of the bush will be blooming and the other side is dead. Likewise the boxwood on the other side of the driveway. I think it might be spider mites, but we've nixed the idea of putting some kind of major pesticide out in the yard. So I need to do some research or consult an expert.

3) The planted, treed area to the right of the driveway has pinestraw on the ground, pinestraw that needs to be renewed a couple of times a year. This was the planted area that the spelling geniuses at the Garden Committee said needed to be "redifined." So we need some more straw to "redifine" it, I guess. Two dudes with a truckload of pinestraw appear every now and again in the neighborhood, and I've paid them twice to clean up that area and spread straw, but I think they charge too much, so I want some new dudes.

So angst, people. I've got yard angst. There are several tons of biomass around this place that are all under my custodianship. Underlying all of this, if you haven't figured this out, is that we are CHEAP when it comes to the yard. Matt, especially, doesn't want to pay anyone to do anything because he thinks he should do it. (Remind me to tell you about when he got up on the roof to try to clean a rust stain off the chimney cap. The roof slopes at a 45 degree angle. He was wearing kitchen gloves and sneakers, and toting the garden hose and a bottle of CLR. He did not get far, but he was up there long enough for me to decide that a money market account was the best idea for the life insurance settlement in the short term, and that I shouldn't use some of it to pay off the house. I decided I would wait six months before making any major financial decisions. Then he made it down alive.)

If you are still reading, thank you. This was therapeutic for me. Same time next week?

For more not-necessarily productive list posts, check out ABDPBT's new bloggy carnival, invented this very day:

So Much More Earth-Loving Than I Thought

I was just flipping through the "Fashion Rocks" supplement to Vanity Fair. I wish I had a parakeet, because that magazine needs to be on the bottom of a birdcage. But what caught my eye was a picture of some lovely hydrangeas in a vase, labeled "organic hydrangeas" from a fancy flower shop in NYC. The arrangement can be yours for $175. Hmm, I thought. Really? Now, a healthy organic rose garden would be a real accomplishment. But hydrangeas? It's not like they're hard to grow. Then I realized: our policy of neglecting or minimally maintaining our yard and flowering trees, shrubs, etc., means that everything that grows out there is organic!

Here are some hydrangeas from the giant bush next to our front door. I love these flowers, they grow like crazy, and I literally gave them away in buckets all spring. If you visited in March or April and stood still long enough, I probably placed a container of hydrangeas right on top of you. Excuse me, I mean, organic hydrangeas. And apparently I was way undercharging my neighbors. So I've got that going for me.

The $175 bouquet was on a page of fashion and decorating ideas supposedly inspired by Devendra Banhart. Now, he may be all tasteful and edgy and darling, but I doubt he's like, "Natalie, get me some hydrangeas like my Granny used to grow!"

Matt's and my only deliberate foray into organic yard care was the "organic fertilizer" he put on the front lawn. Lesson: organic fertilizer is dung, folks. Like, as in poop. So now when it rains it smells like the county fair out there. I guess we were the last people to know this. Our grass is a whole other post, but I won't do that to you.

Dew Drop Inn

This last weekend was the first weekend we’ve all been home together in a long time, so Matt and I were celebrating by scrambling around doing chores. We had received a “friendly reminder” notice from our Home Owners’ Association telling us that our front yard needs work or it will bring all our property values down. The letter said to do three things: Please mow grass; please edge between lawn and driveway; and please “redifine” the planted area at the right side of the yard.

Matt and I decided that the last part meant we needed to tidy up the pine straw covering our planted area, but I was intrigued by the possibilities inherent in the invitation to “redifine” that area. Perhaps we could redefine it as a more wild, less cultivated, natural buffer between our neighbor and us? Or as a place for hoboes to doss down while passing through? Maybe the HOA needs to be more specific if they want a certain result. But we don’t like to flout the rules, and I even appreciate the fact that this HOA keeps my neighbors from having junk cars out in their front yards, or those plywood garden decorations that look like fat ladies bending over. We want the HOA—we need them on that wall.

My part of the chores had consisted of changing all the beds, standing at the top of the stairs, and throwing the dirty sheets down onto the living room floor. The kids thought this was a great idea, and started carrying pieces of laundry back up the stairs to drop them again and again. This created a much wider distribution pattern of laundry across the living room. I didn’t want to spoil their fun by actually taking the sheets to the washer, so I turned to getting supper organized.

At this point Matt came in from a Home Depot trip and invited me to come see a new ladder he bought, so I scampered out there (come on, ladders are cool). While we were standing in the driveway, clad in our Saturday best (mine was a pajama top, Hawaiian shorts, and crocs), a BMW pulls up behind us. I didn’t recognize the car or the nicely dressed young couple inside it, so I thought they were Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I may have been giving them the stink-eye. When Matt greeted them, I realized that they were our Sunday-night dinner guests. Arriving on Saturday. Matt had invited two couples, one couple I knew and one I didn’t, over for a Sunday night dinner. And here were the Hamiltons, whom I didn’t know but who looked perfectly lovely. They were mortified when they realized their mistake. I had to laugh when Kelly, the wife, said to her husband, “From now on, I’m reading all the emails.”

I invited them to come in and have supper with us, because I had just put chicken and cornbread muffins in the oven. As when anyone stops by your house, you do a quick mental calculation of just how messy IS the place—is it fit to be seen or are there horrors too terrible for public view? (Flylady calls this CHAOS—Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome.) I quickly decided that we were dealing only with kid clutter. And the fact that I was wearing a pajama top. But nothing was dirty or anything. Then I walked through the front door just slightly ahead of everyone else and saw the giant pile of laundry. Or it had been a pile when I’d dropped it from upstairs. Now it was more of a layer. Following the Suburban Matron Rule of Never Apologize for the State of Your House, I just did a graceful pirouetting all about the room and swept up all the clothes. It was graceful. Or it may have been. The Hamiltons were much too polite to notice any of this.

And I did change my shirt, but not immediately. I whipped up a salad and a veg and we all had dinner. And the Hamiltons were delightful company, and we were really glad that they came over. And I was also pleased that we had our act minimally together enough to be hospitable, and to offer them something besides crackers and the beer they brought. We spent a nice night talking and playing cards, and after they left, Matt said, “Your sprezzatura is beyond words.” A rave review from my most valued critic!

So what do you do with unexpected company? Do you keep special snacks on hand? Sheets to drape over things? Do you enjoy it or does it scare you?

They came back the next night, along with our other friends, and we had another lovely time. And the Hamiltons brought a bottle of gin this time—I really like those people!

Not Yet Hot

It is perfect high Spring here now. Just today I noticed that the light in the sunroom looks noticeably greener, now that the trees have leafed out. I liked the white winter light too, but this is new and different.

Two neighbors within sight of us are getting new roofs today. It's the whole deal where the roofer helps you get your house insurer to declare that you have hail damage or wind damage, then they pay for a whole new roof. We tried that. The claims guy (who looked like he was grown in a vat of Hale n' Hearty) walked all over the roof and declared that it looked fine. Our luck.

But now that it's spring there are several things we need to do outside. Like figure out what's slowly defoliating the azaleas. And decide what to prune and how much. (Can forsythia be TOO straggly?) I swear, the sheer biomass that that I have to keep up with around here is staggering.